


Pull Me Under

by rivers_bend



Series: Pull Me Under [2]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Gen, Hair Pulling, Headspace, Kink Exploration, Needy Harry, Other, Platonic Relationships, Sub Harry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-16
Updated: 2013-08-16
Packaged: 2017-12-23 15:46:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/928288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivers_bend/pseuds/rivers_bend
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Lou goes back to tugging at Harry’s hair, waits for him to continue the story or start a new one, but ends up watching his eyes drift closed again instead, his knees flop wider, his lips part...</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pull Me Under

**Author's Note:**

> The Obvious: I do not know any of the people whose names and public personas are used in this story and neither believe nor mean to imply any of this happened.

The first time she notices it, Lou thinks Harry’s just trying to keep bits of hair out of his eyes. She’s holding a section of his fringe taut, snipping the ends to accentuate the curl, having worked her way forward from the crown. She can see Harry’s face in the mirror, see the slow but shallow rise and fall of his chest, and his eyelashes fanned against his cheeks, and he almost looks like he’s sleeping. It can be hard to get the boy to shut up half the time, and she can’t say she’s not a little grateful for the reprieve. She’s got Niall’s hair to do next, then Louis’, and it’s going to be a long evening. She finishes the section at the front, then focuses on the back, tugging and pulling to make sure she’s got it how she wants it. By the time she looks at Harry’s face again he’s got his eyes open, but he still hasn’t said a word, and he stumbles a little as she guides him toward the hair-washing sink. 

“Get some sleep after this, hon,” she says. “You look tired.” 

Harry gives her one of those slow smiles that makes pants fly off girls and lads everywhere he goes, and kisses her on the cheek. “Kay,” he says, lifting her hand to his mouth and kissing that too. 

“Git,” she tells him, smacking him lightly on the arse. “Send me Niall.” 

When she sees Harry later, he’s got Zayn in a headlock and is trying to wrestle a game controller out of his grip. They’re both hollering fit to wake the dead, and she thinks she must have imagined how subdued Harry was earlier. 

*

The second time, she’s combing Harry’s hair out between setups at a photo shoot. It’s gummed to fuck with hairspray, and the kindest thing to do would be just wash it, but what she’s got is a brush, so that’s what she uses. When he sits in her chair, he’s already retelling her a story the photographer’s assistant told him, but five or six strokes into the brushout, his words slow—even for Harry—and taper off to nothing. 

“Sorry,” she says, noticing his eyes are shut and his breaths have gone shallow. She must be hurting him, and the silly boy won’t say anything. 

“No,” Harry drawls a few seconds after she stops brushing, blinking his eyes open to look at her. 

“No?” She can’t tell if she’s not supposed to be sorry or not supposed to stop, or not supposed to keep brushing.

“Go,” Harry says. “Just makes me sleepy.” 

Lou laughs. Leave it to Harry. “Of course it does, babe. No sleeping now, though. We’ve got to get you all slicked down for the next round of pictures.” 

She goes back to tugging at Harry’s hair, waits for him to continue the story or start a new one, but ends up watching his eyes drift closed again instead, his knees flop wider, his lips part, and that’s when she starts to wonder if _sleepy_ was exactly the word Harry meant. But Liam comes running over then to say they need Harry back in ten minutes, and he picks up Lou’s squirt bottle and sprays Harry in the face with it, making Harry sputter and flail and keep his eyes wide open ready for another attack. Harry doesn’t mention being sleepy _or_ horny, so Lou doesn’t either. 

*

Lou and her sister Sam and Tom and Lux are at brunch with Harry and Nick; they’ve taken over half the tiny beer garden at a pub near Sam’s, two tables and a patch of lawn for themselves and the pram and Lux’s blanket of toys. Harry’s finished his eggs and fruit and left his beer behind to lie down with Lux and play for a bit. They’ve built a tower with some duplo, stripped and re-dressed her doll, and now she’s sitting on Harry’s back while he bounces on his elbows and makes what Lou assumes are meant to be horse noises. Lux has a death grip on his hair, and Lou knows how much fun that isn’t, but Harry doesn’t make a peep, just puts a hand up to her leg making sure she’s steady, and whinnies for her. 

“Don’t hurt Uncle Harry,” Tom says when he turns to see what’s going on. 

“She’s fine,” Harry reassures him. “We’re having fun, aren’t we, baby?” 

“Wheeee!” Lux squeals, and Harry rolls her off and tickles her, until everyone’s laughing at her infectious giggles. Then Sam sweeps in and scoops Lux up to dance with her to Mumford and Sons. 

Denied Lux to play with, Harry scoots along the blanket enough to lean against Nick’s thigh where Nick’s turned to straddle the bench so he doesn’t have his back to the action. When Lou looks at them again after Sam’s done twirling and dipping her niece, Nick’s checking his phone with one hand, with the other twisted tight in Harry’s hair, and Harry might as well be a rag doll. His arms are limp at his sides, one wrist bent at an odd angle in his lap, the other twisted sideways against Nick’s ankle, and his head is lolling over Nick’s knee. It looks as though if Nick let go his hair, Harry would slip bonelessly to the ground. Lou recognizes his soft mouth and fluttering eyelashes from her makeup mirror. 

She probably shouldn’t, but she can’t help looking at the V made by the way Harry’s legs are folded to the side. She’s seen how half the time all Nick has to do is hold his hand to give Harry a tent in his trousers—bless the teenage libido—but that’s not an issue now. He just seems to be blissed out by Nick’s grip. 

Tom gets another round of drinks in, and Nick puts down his phone, takes a sip, then strokes Harry’s cheek with condensation-damp fingers, squeezes his shoulders a few times. He murmurs something in Harry’s ear that Lou doesn’t quite catch, but is something like, “You with us, popstar?” Harry nods, rubs his face on Nick’s jeans, and lets himself be pulled up to tuck in between Nick’s spread thighs, lean back against his chest. After a few minutes, he picks up his own drink, and after several more, he grabs some crisps from the pile spilled out onto a napkin in the middle of the table. Sam asks him a question about the Wombles, and he’s chatting away again like he never stopped. 

*

Tour is crazy, and Lou has it better than most, with her man and daughter along for the ride, and a ready supply of childminders if she needs twenty minutes to take a shower, or an hour alone before she screams. Sometimes Louis will come and take Lux when she doesn’t even need him to, missing baby-sister snuggles, and most days having Harry around is like travelling with her own personal valet. She can’t imagine how much stress the boys are under, even though they clearly love what they’re doing.  
   
Harry’s been riding on their bus lately, playing with Lux until she goes to sleep, then chilling with the grownups or making them do stupid things for his Vines. Tonight it’s the latter, and from the crash she just heard, someone fell off the toilet. “Sorry,” Harry says before she can call out to ask if everyone’s alright. One of the other guys grumbles something she can’t hear, but it doesn’t sound like they need to ring the medics. Cal and Tom and Harry appear a minute later. Cal has a big wet streak on the front of his shirt, Tom’s hair looks like a whole family of birds are nesting in it, and Harry looks sheepish.  
   
“Enough filming tonight,” Lou says. “You’re going to wake Lux if you’re not careful, and I don’t fancy a detour to A and E.”  
   
“Sorry,” Harry says again. He sits next to her and nuzzles her neck in the asking-for-forgiveness way she shouldn’t find endearing but always has. “You could do something to my hair,” Harry suggests when she pats his back.  
   
“Something like what?” She’s not letting him cut his hair just because he’s bored; he’d never forgive her.  
   
“Just, I don’t know.” She reaches up and twists a curl around her finger, giving it a little tug. “Yeah,” he says. “Just like that.”  
   
Neither of them are comfortable with him hunched over onto her shoulder the way he is, so she puts him on the floor between her feet, gets him leaning back against the banquette, and starts to comb through his locks with her fingers. He’s twitchy for a minute or two, but by the time she’s worked out the first snarl—and seriously, what were they doing back there to get their hair in such a state?—he’s got his head tipped forward and his whole body loose. “You okay?” she murmurs, and he doesn’t answer. Cal and Tom are talking quietly with Marco on the other side of the lounge. It’s peaceful. 

Some of the knots are stubborn and she should get up and get a comb, but Harry doesn’t seem to mind if she pulls too hard, not flinching even when she gets her ring caught.

After she gets all the snarls out and Harry’s hair is silky between her fingers, she keeps petting him, idly listening to the others chat about life on the road, occasionally chiming in if she has an opinion she feels strongly enough about to share. About one AM, Tom comes over and kisses the top of her head, says, “I’m gonna get some sleep, babe.”  
   
“We there?” Harry rumbles, making her start, snag his hair in her ring again. “Mmm, ow.”  
   
“No,” she tells him, rubbing his head briskly with her fingertips to take the sting out. They should be at the hotel around two. Tom will probably stay with the baby, bring her up when she wakes in the morning, but Lou’ll take the opportunity for a real bed. “An hour or so. You can go back to sleep and I’ll wake you.”  
   
“’S’okay.” Harry stretches his arms and legs out in front of him. “Wasn’t sleeping.”

“If you say so,” she says. 

Harry tips his head back against the inside of her thigh, looking up at her. “Wasn’t. Just, going somewhere else for a while.” 

That sounds like a euphemism for sleep to Lou, but what does she know? Maybe Harry has some kind of hair-based meditation routine. She’s heard of stranger things. 

*

Harry refuses to tell Lou exactly what happened, but whoever was interviewing him and Niall must have been a real arse, because Niall came back shaking and swearing a streak, and he drank three tins while Harry aggressively cuddled him. Now it’s late enough it’s early back home, he’s gone back to his room to ring his family, leaving Harry still out of sorts. He was texting someone for a while, but that’s dried up, and he made her film him having arm-wrestling competitions with all the other lads, but the only ones hanging out tonight are from the security team, so Harry’s hopelessly outmatched. 

“Could you do the thing?” Harry asks her when someone turns on the TV and people start to drift over there. 

More often than not, Lou can follow Harry’s vague conversational wanderings, but she’s lost this time. “The thing?” 

“The hair thing.” 

Oh, of course. The hair thing. How could she not have known. Bless Harry. He’s an odd duck sometimes, but the poor boy definitely looks like he could do with some meditation. “Sure,” she says. 

He curls to the floor at her feet, resting his head on her knee, and she strokes his hair off his face. With a _hmmm_ , he wraps one hand around her ankle and she gets a rhythm going, combing her fingers through his curls and stroking over the back of his head. After a minute, maybe two, he reaches up and squeezes her fingers. “You need to—” he says. “Need to, like, _pull_.” He shows her, giving his own hair a slow steady yank, moving back a bit and doing it again. “Is that okay?” 

She’d go mental if someone did that to her, but this is a boy who starts junk-punching matches with his mates, so it’s not like she’s entirely surprised. “Yeah, honey. ‘Course it is.” Starting at the front, she gets two good handfuls of hair and pulls. Harry’s grip on her ankle tightens and his shoulders tense, but they go lax as she eases up, slides her hands back for a second tug, and then he stays that way. 

It’s an oddly soothing thing to do, pulling someone’s hair like this, the rhythm of clenching and releasing her fists shifting the stress from her own shoulders. It’s obviously working for Harry, too; he’s nearly a puddle against her legs. She carries on until her fingers start to ache, and whatever the blokes had decided on for telly ends and they grumble about the next thing. With one last hard tug at Harry’s crown, she lays her hands flat on his head and takes a deep breath. “Okay, Haz?” she asks softly. 

Harry doesn’t say anything, but his fingers twitch against her ankle, and the shoulder pressed against her thigh moves a fraction. She gives his scalp a gentle skritch. “Mmmm,” he murmurs. 

“You gonna be okay if I go check on Lux?” She doesn’t want to leave him if he’s going to just tip onto the floor, but she’s pretty desperate to unkink her legs and have a wee.

“Yeah,” Harry says, voice stretched like boiled syrup. He doesn’t sound entirely convincing, so she gives him another minute, stroking down his head to his shoulders, giving them a little squeeze. That seems to help him find his spine. “Yeah,” he says again, sitting up a little. Lou leans in and gives him a kiss on one temple. 

“You’re a good lad,” she tells him, though she’s pretty sure he knows that. 

“Thanks, Lou,” he says. 

She goes to check on her daughter and take a piss. When she comes back out to the sitting area, Harry’s gone.

*

There’s no sign of Harry’s drifting episodes the next several times Lou styles him, but he comes and finds her one afternoon while Niall and Liam are in the gym the other boys are off with their girlfriends, and asks her to _do the thing_ again. Then again a couple of weeks later and a few days after that. Between times, he never mentions it, and despite her initial assumptions based on his mood when he first asked, it doesn’t seem to be particularly linked to times of stress. It’s just a thing they do sometimes, like planning ever more elaborate vines, or watching bad American telly, only with less talking. 

One night after Harry’s gone back to his room, she gets a text from Nick that says, “thanks for looking after Harry,” with a sparkle manicure, a yellow heart, and a kitten emoji. 

Tom comes out of Lux’s room and finds Lou grinning at her phone. “Something good?” he asks. 

She can’t really find a way to explain it, so she just says, “Nice to be told you’re good at your job.” It’s close enough. Tom turns off the desk lamp and goes to check the security lock is set while she hunts through until she finds the haircut emoji and the head massage, and adds a puppy for good measure before she hits send. Nick always appreciates a puppy. 

“You’re good at everything,” Tom says, taking her phone and setting it aside so he can lie her back on the sofa, lean over her just out of kissing distance. “How ‘bout I be good to you?” 

Lou thinks that’s an excellent idea. 

~fin

**Author's Note:**

> thanks ever so to disarmed_d for pre-reading duties <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Pull Me Under](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1020335) by [ofjustimagine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofjustimagine/pseuds/ofjustimagine)




End file.
